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Dogs Were Domesticated in Two Different Places

June 5, 2016 By Chen Lai Leave a Comment

According to a new study published this week in the Science magazine, dogs were domesticated in two different places. It seems that the early humans were so in love with the canids, that they approached them independently in two different areas of the world.

Researchers have been asking themselves “where was the first dog domesticated” for quite some time now. It seems that, finally, one team of scientists is answering this question. The good news is that it has two correct answers seeing as two distinct populations decided that it’s a good idea to domesticate the canids at around the same time.

Laurent Frantz, a professor at Oxford University, declared that the results were surprising because usually a domesticated species has a single origin. However, seeing as the majority of early farmers were using the dogs with the same purpose in mind, it’s not at all surprising.

The paper that was published on Thursday stresses the fact that the theory on which the study is based on is only an assumption, the team needing more time to analyze the evidence and historical facts.

The study was based on archaeological records and genetics. Among others, it included the complete genome of a dog that roamed Ireland approximately 4,800 years ago. They also had samples of DNA from 59 dogs from Europe that lived 3,000 to 14,000 years ago.

The ancient canid genetic material was compared to that of a sample of 685 modern day dogs. After analyzing the differences, the team concluded that dogs were probably domesticated in two different places.

The most probable scenario is that the humans from Asia decided to domesticate the wolves that hung around their farms, while those from the Near East or Europe did the same thing with another species of canids.

When the Asian populations decided to travel to the Near East, they took their dogs with them, thus combining the two different breeds. This is how the dog population that presents different genetic features as the Asian dogs came to be.

Frantz declared that many modern-day dogs presented genetic components from both species.

The theory that dogs were domesticated in two different places is not that farfetched. At the beginning of the year, a group of scientists managed to demonstrate that cats, too, were domesticated in both Asia and Europe independently.

Image source: Pixabay

Preterm Complications, Major Cause of Death In Infants: Study Reveals

November 17, 2014 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

The preterm birth complications now outrank all other reasons of death for infants. Out of more than 6.3 million deaths of infants under age five in 2013, about 1 million occurred because of preterm issues. The study was published on 17^th Nov, the World’s Prematurity Day.

The recent study shows up in the Lancet medical journal. It’s a synergistic collaboration of scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization (WHO)..

The major part of the deaths constitutes direct preterm births complications happened in the initial 28-days of life – with another 125,000 deaths happening between one month and five years.

“Throughout the last few years the extent of deaths because of preterm births has been expanding. The purpose behind this is that we don’t generally have significant intercessions set up to evade preterm births – and second, to oversee them in most groups where they happen, Dr. Andres de Francisco, interval official executive of the Geneva-based Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, said.

Preterm birth complications are a global issue, he added.

“We have countries in Africa, for instance – Nigeria – or in Asia – India and Pakistan – that have tremendously high numbers of children that are dying due to preterm births. Anyhow, this is not just an issue in developing nations. This is additionally an issue that affects developed nations, too.”

India really beat the rundown, emulated by Nigeria, Pakistan, the DRC, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Angola and Kenya. Specialists caution the Ebola flare-up in West Africa raises the danger of preterm complications in the affected countries.

The ascent in deaths from preterm birth complications really harmonizes with a staged decrease in the overall death rate of kids under five.

“Mortality is declining by around 3.9% every year, which is an extremely noteworthy decline of mortality – and it’s because of a ton of interventions that we have in stock, including reducing the mortality because of contagious ailments, for example, pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, among others,” he said.

A portion of the intercessions credited for the death rate decrease include vaccines, bed nets, antibiotics, anti-malarial and HIV treatments.

Yet Dr. de Francisco said the death rate for preterm children has declined by a much diminutive rate of 2% a year. The major reason, he says, is an absence of sufficient intercessions. Furthermore, at this moment, it’s not clear what the best intercessions are, besides addressing obesity, HBP and hypertension.

Moreover, the study said generally its not fully recognized what triggers preterm labor – and about 50% of preterm births happen impulsively.

“This is why, reason for mortality needs to be contemplated significantly and in much more concentrated way. Since if we don’t know the reasons – if we don’t know the factors – pregnancy is going to end in a preterm birth. Furthermore this needs to be the center of escalated research,” de Francisco said.

An intensive research amounting $250-million is getting underway through four noteworthy activities: the Global Coalition to Advance Preterm Birth Research; the March of Dimes; the University of California at San Francisco’s Preterm Birth Initiative; and the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.

“If we support these research programs, in the following five years or so, we will be able to have intercessions that are going to help the lessening of mortality in these little children,” he said.

DNA Reveals, Neanderthals & Modern Humans First Mated 50000 years ago

October 22, 2014 By Germaine Hicks 3 Comments

Recently, the researchers examined the DNA of a 45000 year old bone of a Siberian man in order to find out when human and Neanderthals first mated.

Though, the modern humans are the only humans surviving human ancestry, others once lived on Earth. The closest extinct relatives of the modern humans were the Neanderthals who lived in Europe and Asia and vanished around 40,000 years ago. According to the recent study, the Neanderthals mated with ancestors of modern humans when modern humans began spreading out of Africa and today 1.5% to 2.1% of the DNA of anyone living outside Africa is Neanderthal in origin.

The researchers said, “it remains vague when interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans happened. But it probably ranged between 37000 to 86000 years ago.”

In order to resolve this mystery, the researchers examined the shaft of a thighbone, which is discovered by Nikolai Peristov, an artist and mammoth ivory collector on the left bank of the river Irtysh near the settlement of Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia in 2008. The age of the man’s bone to be is about 45,000 years old, researchers stated.

Janet Kelso, co-author of the study and a computational biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told Live Science, “This is the earliest directly dated modern human outside of Africa and the Middle East, and the oldest modern human genome to have been sequenced.”

In the past, the researchers had proposed modern humans firstly populated Asia by traveling towards southern, coastal route that gave rise to the present-day people of Oceania, while a later, more northern migration, gave rise to mainland Asians. Kelson stated, “the researchers’ evidence for the modern human presence in Siberia 45,000 years ago specifies that the early modern humans were not just migrated to Eurasia through a southern route as previously suggested.”

The researchers further examined the carbon and nitrogen isotopes present in the man’s bone proposes that he ate C3 plants, which rule cooler, wetter, cloudier regions such as garlic, eggplants, pears, beans and wheat as well as animals that also dined on C3 plants. Though, the study analysis reveals that he might have eaten aquatic foods like fresh water fish.

The bone’s genetic analysis revealed that the man was closely related to present-day Asians and to early Europeans. “From this we conclude that the population to which the Ust’-Ishim individual belonged diverged from the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians before, or at around the same time as, these groups diverged from one another,” Kelso said.

The Siberian man carried a similar level of Neanderthal ancestry as present-day Eurasians and the Neanderthal genes moved into the ancestors of this man 7,000 to 13,000 years before he lived, researchers revealed.

The results of the study propose that modern humans and Neanderthals mated around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, “which is close to the time of the major expansion of modern humans out of Africa and the Middle East,” Kelso said.

The study is published in the Nature journal.

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